Rutgers does poor job of marketing itself, new president says

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerRutgers University President Robert Barchi speaks during a press conference on his first day on campus.

NEW BRUNSWICK — Rutgers University needs to do a better job selling itself to students, the state and the rest of the nation, the school’s new president said Tuesday.

In his fourth day on the job, Robert Barchi outlined his plans for the state university in an hour-long conversation with reporters outside his office in Old Queens on the New Brunswick campus.

Barchi — an Ivy League-educated physician and former president of Thomas Jefferson University — said Rutgers has a lot of great qualities. But the 58,000-student university does a poor job of marketing itself.

"There isn’t any question that we want to be a university that moves from good to great," Barchi said. "We have all the elements necessary to do that. Part of it is a building process. Part of it is a brand-recognition process for the greatness that’s already here."

His immediate plans include starting a strategic planning process to chart the university’s future. He will also reshuffle and restructure the university’s management structure and oversee Rutgers’ takeover of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

At 65, Barchi said he wants to get moving quickly. He has committed to stay at Rutgers for at least five years. But he does not intend to make the university his retirement home and he isn’t worried about upsetting the status quo, he said.

"I’m not in this game to be beloved," Barchi said. "I do expect to get a job done. That’s how I measure myself."

Barchi’s arrival is the culmination of a nationwide search for a new leader to replace Richard McCormick, who stepped down in June after a decade as president to rejoin the faculty as a history and education professor.

Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-LedgerRutgers University President Robert Barchi takes a question during a press conference on his first day on campus.

The change in leadership did not come cheap. Rutgers spent $226,500 on its search for a new president, which included screening more than 200 candidates. Barchi will earn a base pay of $650,000 a year, about $100,000 more than McCormick. The new president will also be eligible for performance bonuses.

Barchi has Jersey roots. He grew up in Westfield before moving to Trenton as a teenager.

He went to Georgetown University and earned both a medical degree and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as provost of the University of Pennsylvania before he was recruited in 2004 to become president of Thomas Jefferson University, a health science and medical university in Philadelphia.

Though he has no experience running a public university, Rutgers officials are banking on Barchi’s medical background to help in the complex merger with UMDNJ.

Under legislation Gov. Chris Christie signed last month, Rutgers must absorb nearly all of UMDNJ, including two of its medical schools. Rutgers’ two governing boards still need to sign off on the merger, which is being reviewed by the university’s consultants.

Barchi said he believes the UMDNJ merger can be done without passing on the cost to students through tuition hikes.

The new president met with Christie before he agreed to take the job to see if his views on Rutgers’ future meshed with those of the hard-charging Republican governor.

"This is someone that I can work with," Barchi said. "Although our methods and immediate operating modes may not be exactly the same, I think our goals for higher education and for the state and for the people of the state are very similar."

The new president and his wife, Francis Harper Barchi, a senior fellow in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, spent the last week unpacking nearly 200 boxes they moved into the Rutgers president’s house in Piscataway.

Mrs. Barchi will join the Rutgers faculty as a research professor in January, the president said. Campus officials said she will be a non-tenured assistant professor in the School of Social Work and will work with the Institute for Women’s Leadership. She will earn $78,500 a year.

Though Barchi admits he is still getting lost driving himself from his new house to his new office, the president is already thinking about his legacy.

"What I need to be is someone who, when I’m through, people will say, ‘I’m glad he was here and we got some things done we needed to get done and we’re a better place for it,’ " Barchi said.